Graeme Christie | Tuesday, 7 July 2026
In the South Island many rivers close for winter. Some of the big ones stay open all year. They're not the famous rivers. Often they're quite modified for power generation and water use, carrying the high rainfall of the southern mountains down to the coast. They hold very good trout numbers, and winter spawning movements put fish where you can find them.
A friend of mine does search and rescue on the lakes and winter rivers. His stories all start with someone who was sure they'd be fine. The big river was running at 450 cumecs, 200 cumecs higher than last year, slightly murky, which for fishing is often ideal. The river deserved respect, so Ronan Creane and I picked our water carefully and kept the wading conservative. The flow shut off access to some stretches, but that's winter. Snow was forecast. We got rain instead, at 2 to 3 degrees, so off we went.
The first pool looked good. Spotting fish was possible but not easy in the milky green water, so we fished blind. A follow almost immediately. This boded well.
We worked through a few pools, the second giving up two fish. Glow bugs with different bead sizes were the order of the day. Stripping large streamers also brought results. Lunch was a tasty sandwich and a needed warm up with hot tea.
We carried on up the river. Finally a rainbow. The unusual thing was how long it took, since they're the most common fish caught here, sitting in pods throughout the river.
The river is so large that casting randomly will probably find you a fish, but not many. In places it's a big drain, a deep flow rolling through relentlessly. Picking side braids, pools that look fishy, gentle inside bends and shallow riffles is the way. Move on if nothing. Cover ground. By the end we had 8 or 9 trout between us, 50/50 browns to rainbows. The biggest was a 3.5lb brown. Working hard and steady and prospecting likely water kept us in action all day. A top day.
The next day I made it out again. I gave myself a first hand lesson in how hard a barbed hook is to get out of your own thumb. Like Paul I have a rugby background, so out it came. My thumb being a frozen piece of meat helped. Relatively painless, at the time. The lead up was its own timely reminder. An upstream wind onto the casting shoulder isn't beaten by overconfidence in your technique. 2 more fish landed.
I'll manage a bit more fishing in the South yet.